Chapter 4
Tangled in chains at the bottom of the river, Kore blinked.
Trying to deny what her eyes claimed to be true.
Eyes bulging from their sockets, hair floating in a dark mass around her face, she stared. Awestruck by the man… the… inhuman beast commanding the very current that ruffled her rags and caressed cold flesh.
Without thinking, she let her fingers twist in an unfamiliar pattern.
Calling not on the lord who had forsaken her…
… but on his uncle.
Again.
Just as she had in the filthy hull of the trireme. Repeating the exact same betrayal of her sworn lord, for floating above her wasn’t a son of Zeus.
Or Hades.
But the son of Poseidon.
Triton.
In his right hand, a mighty, three-pronged trident gleamed in the dim light of the crescent moon. At his hip, a conch fastened in place with twisted weeds and braided shells.
But it was the demi-god himself who’d forced Kore’s jaws to grow slack in awe. Her lips parted on a gasp that died before it might even be born, for her lungs were full of… him. Still frozen and unable to draw breath.
Heavy bands of muscle laced an impossibly broad chest. Ridges and valleys sculpted by an endless battle with his natural element, he was a behemoth. Undeniably male, yet where her brain insisted there should be a narrow waist above his hips that blended with thickly muscled thighs, there was…
Something else.
Scales.
Glittering and hypnotic. A seamless blend between man and leviathan, his tail was… magnificent. Thick with power, longer than she was tall, and ridged in fins that flicked and shifted as he held his pose above her in the current.
Letting her look.
A sound moved through her, then.
Something born from the Deep, for it needed no breath to live. Felt through her blood, moving through her bone and sinew, it was impatience and hunger. Derision and eager thirst.
It was him.
His voice. It filled the waves and conquered the surf.
With a single sweep of that mighty fin, he flipped and plunged through the depths to reclaim her. Hand outstretched.
She couldn’t help but cringe.
Flinching, she flung her hand up to cover her face in some vain attempt to protect herself.
Merciless fingers found an anchor, engulfing her forearm from wrist to elbow. He hauled her up. Tore her free of the rocky snare where her chains had caught on the riverbed before he turned again.
Toward the surface.
Making short work of the depths, he carried on swimming without so much as a backward glance at his captive. Heedless of her weakening struggles, her silent pleas went unheard as he towed her toward a destination only he seemed to know.
Lungs frozen as if truly dead—neither breathing nor drowning—she dozed for a while, if one might call such a stupor sleep. Hypnotized by the way her limbs fluttered in his wake.
Senseless until the hint of fresh water had grown salty once more, for he’d used the river as a bridge to claim access into yet another sea.
One Kore couldn’t name, for what use had a servant of Apollo for knowledge of geography? She’d known nothing but the shores of the Aegean. Never been anywhere but the temple of Delphi, where she’d served since she’d been given to the priests as an unclaimed orphan.
The next time they surfaced, the sun’s rays were being swallowed by the night—the second such evening she’d spent in his company. As his tribute. His… captive.
And as she looked, the last of the sun’s rays burned across the surface of the water.
Kore squinted and cringed away from Apollo’s kiss… for she was unworthy of his golden touch.
Tarnished by a son of the Deep who’d come when she’d begged to be saved.
Rescued, but for what, she didn’t know and couldn’t ask.
She was helpless but to observe until the moon was high and they had arrived at last.
The demi-god slowed before he stopped.
Pausing only to observe the low tide before he surged forward once more.
Navigating the turbulence of the shallows with confidence and patience, he skirted jagged rock, eased over sandy banks, and dragged her through shallow pools warmed by even this weak sunlight.
Careless of her tender, water-logged skin, he dragged himself onto land. Using his magnificent tail as leverage, he moved with a slow, serpentine grace that was an insult to his mastery of the sea. It was ungainly. A chore to heave that heavy appendage across land and drag her ashore.
Kore’s chains rattled across stone worn smooth by the endless tempers of the ocean.
All she could do was endure.
Ignoring the burn of tender flesh, she forced herself to grow deaf to the many unanswered questions echoing between her ears.
Contenting herself with prayer, she waited as he worked. Watching until he’d found a perch tucked beneath a rocky ceiling, he pulled her into a shallow cave. One carved straight from stone over many long millennia.
It was dry enough, she supposed, with the tide at its lowest.
A cavern that would flood when the moon was full and the waters high.
He turned, then. Dumping her in a messy heap of limbs and tattered rags and chaotic heaps of untethered chain, he watched her for a moment. Mighty chest expanding as he fought for breath outside of his natural element, he kept her glued to the stone with a fierce, alien scowl.
And then he lifted his trident.
Poised to strike.
Silhouetted against the sun, he struck a figure that might have sent Kore screaming for the safety of this unnamed ocean once more, could she so much as draw a single breath into frozen lungs.
As it was, all she could do was squeeze her eyes shut and wait. Blinding herself to the end.
When the trident fell, it struck with an impact that cracked stone. Sent shards of limestone to spatter against her bare, waterlogged shins.
She yelped.
The first sound she’d made since emptying her lungs at the bottom of the Aegean.
A tiny scream none but he might have heard, but a sound nevertheless. One she was alive enough to make.
She blinked.
Blinked again.
And then Kore’s gaze flicked to where the prongs of his trident were buried in the stone—and saw the true target of his strike.
Her chains.
Twisted metal was all that remained of the cuff that had bound her wrist to the base of the mast. The only remaining sign of her bondage to Athenian slavers was little more than a puddle of mangled scrap.
Forcing a tiny, ragged breath, Kore pulled air between numb lips. Trying to offer thanks. Trying to apologize for her doubt.
He yanked his spear from the stone as if it were nothing to do so, and turned once more. Shifting back to the ocean with deliberate, undulating twists of his tail.
Flinging one hand out, clumsy and inelegant, Kore tried to scream for him to wait. To beg that he not leave her stranded here, with no food. No voice. No water that wasn’t poisoned to one not born to it.
All she could muster was a wet, wordless rasp.
It did nothing to slow him.
On he went until he’d reached dark, lapping waters once more.
Helpless, she watched as he slipped into the waves and was gone. Too weak to stand, too numb to explore, she curled around herself and set her head against the pile of linked chain.
Gazing up at the sky as her lids grew heavy with the need for sleep, Kore simply worked to breathe. Luxuriating in her ability to do so, each new breath was bigger than the last. Her ribs stretching and moving with proof that she still lived, despite it all. That she’d survived against all odds.
Her chin dipped as the battle was lost, sinking toward her chest. Where rosy pink nipples were pebbled against the cold, half exposed in the tattered remains of a ruined shift that bore the mark of her service to Apollo.
The left one poked through, fully exposed, as if pointing an angry accusation up, toward Olympus.
And then she saw it.
A strange blue glow.
Dimmed by her rags, brighter where the skin of her upper belly was exposed to the chilly night air, it was a glow that came not from her skin…
… but within.